


You take what you need to make you whole

by lalejandra



Category: Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, Pete Wentz and His Humans
Genre: Age Play, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Non-Sexual Age Play, Relationship Negotiation, breathpl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:48:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21809182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalejandra/pseuds/lalejandra
Summary: Fuck, you're a fucking amateur, Saporta, no wonder you're all fucked up about this.
Relationships: Alicia Simmons/Mikey Way, Gabe Saporta/Pete Wentz
Kudos: 8





	You take what you need to make you whole

  


The days when Pete ends up at the Ways' house, Gabe works. Like, actually works, except not really. The songs he writes now . . . well, they're not for Cobra. Sometimes he messes around with remixes, but he never posts them anywhere. He sketches clothes and shoes and burns the designs in Pete's ridiculous fireplace, swims laps, checks in with his crew. Thinks about what Pete and Mikey are doing under Alicia's watchful eye.

Pete and Mikey both like to be young, like to run around with light sabers and watch _Flight of the Navigator_ and _Star Wars_. Lately, Pete's been collecting even more kids' toys than before, now not just for Bronx, but also for when he and Mikey hang out.

(Pete used to call it pretending; Gabe knows the whole story, how Alicia repeated, "Pretend?" one day. "Do you really feel like you're _pretending_?" Then, Pete got home that night, he had a whole email full of links about age play -- he'd forwarded it to Gabe the night Gabe finally got it together and kissed Pete under a full moon; Pete had included a note: _u should know what ur getting into for real. we never have to talk abt this agin if ur grossed out._

But Gabe hadn't been grossed out; how could he have been? Plus, and he hadn't told Pete this, he wasn't exactly a kink novice, and Pete wasn't the first person being little Gabe had taken care of.)

When Gabe picks Pete up from Mikey's house, Pete's almost always still little. Gabe gives him juice boxes, and lets him stay down as long as he wants. When Pete is little -- around eight, Gabe would say -- his room is the guest room. Gabe will read him a story and cuddle him (and his stuffed animals) until he "falls asleep." 

Pete has two stuffed animals for when he's little -- only two, so he never has to pick one or the other; only two, so there are no stuffed animals to sit across the room and watch forlornly as Pete cuddles the chosen one. One of Pete's stuffed animals is a penguin Gabe won for him at a carnival during Warped a million years ago; the other is a cobra Gabe gave him the first time Pete was young around him.

Gabe _loves_ to buy things for little Pete. He's bought him cotton candy and vegan gummi bears and big boxes of crayons and coloring books full of unicorns and Care Bears. He even bought a set of footie pajamas with a hood that he knows Pete likes, even though they're too warm sometimes, because they make Pete feel safe when he's little. Hidden. And Gabe likes everything that makes Pete feel safe.

Once Pete has "fallen asleep," Gabe switches on the nite lite (Ms Pac Man) and goes back to their room to lie on the bed, waiting for Pete to be big again and come to him. They've negotiated this so it's exactly what Pete wants -- to be left there to come up alone, the way he's tucked in, the story Gabe reads. Pete is actually really good at negotiating explicitly what he needs when he's little. It's a little frustrating, though, because Gabe wants to give Pete things to make him feel good and safe when he's big, too, but Pete won't -- or can't? -- let him. 

Sometimes Pete and Gabe fuck and make out and go out for supper, and sometimes they play with Legos and Gabe is his daddy, and for Pete there are super clear lines between what Gabe is allowed to do for grown up Pete and what Gabe is allowed to do for little Pete. So grown up Pete gets _pissed_ when Gabe gives him things and does things for him like he's little when he's big, even if that's not how Gabe means it. Sometimes Gabe wants to snap at him and be like, dude, bringing you a drink isn't always me thinking you're being little. Sometimes it's just because you're fucking thirsty.

Plus, it really upsets Gabe that Pete clearly feels like his grown up self doesn't deserve to have people be kind to him. Except how is Gabe supposed to say that to Pete? So instead, he just gets pissed and yells, and Pete yells back, and Gabe almost always storms out and sits in his car in Pete's driveway, feeling like an idiot and a fool _and_ a douchey asshole, sweltering in the California heat but refusing to turn on the car just to sit in Pete's driveway and castigate himself.

Gabe can count on one hand the number of times Pete has (1) let him sit out there longer than fifteen minutes, and (2) stayed big after a fight like that. It's like... they fight, and Pete immediately has to be little so he can ask for love and comfort. _Once_ they had angry makeup sex. Every other time, Pete has come out to the driveway with a juice box and asked Gabe to open it, or come out with toys and asked Gabe to play. He's come out with a bucket of pink Legos, a set of Jem & the Holograms dolls in their original packaging, and, just the other day, a tray of sparkly peel-off nail polishes. 

Gabe, lies in bed, waiting for Pete to come to him, trying to figure out how to negotiate with _big_ Pete and what big Pete means to him. Little Pete... that's easy, little Pete is like his kid brother and his son and his favorite childhood playmate. Big Pete, though . . . it's not that Gabe doesn't know how he feels, it's that he doesn't know how _Pete_ feels, doesn't want to push him into anything or make him feel pressured. Doesn't want Pete to feel like he _has_ to pretend to reciprocate Gabe's annoying squishy feelings just to keep Gabe for little Pete.

He hates all of these feelings and all of this confusion. Instead of dwelling, he pulls his tablet over and, with a couple of clicks, he's bought an EZ Bake oven and a Lite Brite, and the tablet is back on the nightstand by the time big Pete crawls into bed and starts humping Gabe's leg.

*

The next time they have a stupid fight, it's because Gabe was folding Pete's clothes from the dryer. Pete is all, "Fuck you, I'm not really eight, don't fold my clothes!" 

Gabe doesn't even address that "really" part, just jumps to, "Fuck you, if you don't fold them right away, they get wrinkled. Wrinkled! Wrinkled, Pete!"

Pete storms away and Gabe stands there holding Pete's stupid T-shirt, twisting it in his hands so it gets wrinkled _anyway_. 

But Gabe is a fucking grownup, so instead of storming out to his car this time, he goes into the spare room where he keeps his bass and some boxes of books he didn't want to leave in NY, and opens up the Lite Brite box. He brings it to the living room, where Pete is sullenly watching some really terrible fucking shit on the food network about, like, building castles out of cupcakes or something, and sets up on the floor, in a corner. 

(When Gabe moved in -- although they don't call it that, he's just "crashing" for an indeterminate period of time -- he arranged for a cleaning service to come in twice a week. They have specific instructions to lift shit up, clean under it, and put it back exactly where they found it all; Gabe pays them really well for accommodating Pete's issues with having his stuff moved around. But the cleaning crew is the only reason Gabe will sit on the floor. Because _gross_ otherwise.) 

He sets up the Lite Brite and pulls out all the little colored lights, and starts going through the templates. He didn't have one of these as a kid -- so expensive -- but he bets Pete did. He keeps his back to Pete and the tv, pretending he doesn't hear Pete creeping closer. When he can smell Pete's sneakers (yet another pair of brand new Supras), he turns a little. 

"Hey, there," he says, and grins a little at Pete's wide eyes. 

Little Pete is right at the surface, just waiting to be allowed out. Gabe doesn't want to scare him away by being pissed off at big Pete -- fuck, he doesn't even _want_ to be pissed off at big Pete, he just wants them to be fucking adults sometimes, but it seems like Pete literally _can't_ and, well, Gabe's not letting him go just because of _that_. 

"Wanna help me?" he asks, and little Pete is out in full force, settling onto Gabe's lap and picking a unicorn to poke holes in with light bulbs, and... it's really fucking great. 

Gabe takes a picture of the final result with his phone and shoots it to Mikeyway, who probably _also_ has a Lite Brite to play with with Alicia. 

And that's when Gabe realizes -- if anyone knows some tricks for getting big Pete to stick around and have Big Relationship Discussions with Gabe, it'll be Alicia, who probably had to figure it out with Mikey already. Fuck yeah. 

Later, while Pete's showering, Gabe sends her a totally cryptic text: NEED ADVICE, FEELING STUPID

She gets back to him right away: ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MINERAL.

He replies, "The wild Peter," and she immediately texts him back and tells him to show up any time the next day. He decides to take her at her word and shows up first thing in the morning, armed with a lot of expensive coffee and pastries, and a few packs of cigarettes.

Alicia runs a cup of coffee upstairs to Mikey, in their bedroom, and then they sit outside, in the weak sunlight of early morning. Gabe doesn't usually smoke if he's not out fucking shit up, but this calls for chain smoking. He describes what keeps happening with Pete to Alicia while she drinks the first of three giant coffees he brought her, and eats an almond croissant.

"So, like, I get that he's fucking scared I'm gonna take off and that's why he's doing this, but . . . you know, sometimes I just want to fight with my fucking boyfriend, not take care of my kid," Gabe finishes.

"So do you safeword out?" Alicia asks. She leans over to snag a cigarette from Gabe's pack, and lets him light it for her. She takes a long drag and blows the smoke at Gabe's face, and that is when he realizes she means that seriously and is actually waiting for a real answer.

"Uh, no," he says. "It's not a game, I don't just get to safeword out of Pete being himself."

"No, it's not a game. But when you're upset or uncomfortable or feel hurt, and you can't be in the moment with Pete, it's like any other time when you can't be what you've negotiated --"

"There are no other times," Gabe says, trying to be patient. He lights another cigarette and focuses carefully on it, instead of getting pissed at Alicia. It's not her fault that apparently Pete's been more closed-mouthed with her and Mikey than he'd ever considered. "I guess I figured Pete had told you all this shit already. We don't do anything else that's . . . we don't do anything else, really. We're fucking boring old people already. Just . . . this."

"Really? Was that you or Pete?" Alicia taps her cigarette into the empty cup from her first coffee, and pulls the second one over. Gabe's got his almond milk chai next to him, but now he's wishing he'd gotten himself coffee too.

He shrugs to answer her question. "I didn't think Pete was into other shit."

"So you don't even _have_ a safeword. Fuck, you're a fucking amateur, Saporta, no wonder you're all fucked up about this." Alicia shakes her head, and Gabe wants to rip her face off.

"I told you, this isn't a game. Pete needs it, it's not like he can control it --"

"Yeah," she says, interrupting him. "Yeah, he can fucking control it. He controls it when Bronx is around, and during interviews, and when he fights with Ashlee. He controls it around his parents, and he controls it when he's on tour. You think he did that shit with Bebe? Get real, Gabe. Wise the fuck up. He's acting out, don't you know anything about kids?"

"Fuck no," Gabe says. He tries to hold onto his anger, but it slips away, because Alicia's so fucking right -- Pete gets little because Gabe lets him, because he knows it's an option, and Gabe's been so fucking worried about hurting him and making him feel rejected that he's not actually _taking care of him_.

"I don't know what would work for your relationship necessarily," Alicia tells him, "but with Mikey, I had to teach him that I could get angry with him when he's little and still love him. And, you know. You know Pete, you know what he's been through -- you might want to start there, too."

"Yeah," says Gabe. He drops his forgotten cigarette into Alicia's old coffee cup, and sips his chai, watching the way the sun shines on the water of the Ways' pool. He lets himself get caught up in the pattern, thinking about Pete and what he needs.

"Can I say something else?" Alicia touches his knee.

"Can I stop you?" Gabe feels tired, exhausted in a bone-deep, inside his head, aching heart, every country music cliché kind of way -- but he still smiles at her.

"All of this, for you, is about what Pete needs, what Pete wants. Where are you in this equation? I love when Mikey's little, but I love when he's big, too, and I get what I need from him when he's an adult in a way I can't when he's a child. You can't always be only what Pete needs -- sometimes he has to be what you need, too." She lights another cigarette off the one she's got, and sits back, pulling her feet onto the lounge chair and closing her eyes while she smokes.

She's already wearing eyeliner, the wings coming up at an amazing, perfect, smooth angle, and Gabe can see the tell-tale drift of powder on her cheekbones. He really wants to know what Mikey gives her that she needs, but if he asks, she'll probably hit him. Instead, he sits back in his own chair and tries to figure out what he needs from Pete. As he thinks about it, his mind skirts away from coming up with things he's missing, like his brain knows it's dangerous territory. The edges of the thoughts are sore; the more he tries to figure it out, the more he feels deeply bruised. 

*

Gabe spends the day with Mikey and Alicia, laughing at Mikey's farmer's tan when they strip down to jump in the pool and giving Alicia foot rubs, each of them sitting at one of her feet with matching jars of sweet-smelling shea butter lotion. Gerard and Lindsey and Bandit show up in the late afternoon, and then Frank and Jamia and their kids, and then Pete and Bronx, and then a million more people. Gabe feels a wistful tug in his chest for his Cobras -- all of them. He sends a flurry of texts, even one to Maja, and gets back little messages that feel stupidly soothing.

Well, fuck. He doesn't think of himself as a particularly squishy person, until all his feelings spill out everywhere, which only happens once a year or so. Maybe not even that.

Pete's quiet as they navigate the hills to bring Bronx back to Ash, and Gabe lets him sit with himself. Gabe's sitting with himself, too. 

After they drop Bronx off, Gabe turns the radio low and says, "When I was, like, ten? We had this rabbi who had this awesome prayer shawl. She'd knitted it herself, and she knit, like, words into it in Hebrew. It said, 'Hineni.' 'Here I am.' So, like, every time she pulled it up over her head, you know? She was there, right there. I thought that was fucking brilliant."

"Yeah?" Pete says cautiously.

"Yeah. And, I mean, okay, for Jews it's all about god, right? I found out later, she didn't, like, make that up or some shit." Gabe pulls up to Pete's security gate and punches in the code, waits for the gates to swing open before continuing. "But, you know, I think that sometimes. Like -- on stage. Here I am. Spiritually, you know? Here I am. I'm fucking ready, give it to me, be here with me. You know?"

"Yeah," Pete replies on a sigh.

"Yeah," Gabe says. He parks the car at the top of the hill, turns out the lights. It's bright as day with the motion-detecting floodlights on, but he knows that if they sit in the car long enough, they'll turn off. This is a conversation for bright lights, he thinks, but he can only say this shit in the dark.

It's hard enough.

"And?" Pete asks, once the lights click off. Sometimes Gabe forgets that this dude is his best friend, too, in addition to other shit.

"And . . . sometimes when I'm with you, I feel like you're not here with me. Like, I'm saying, here I am, and you're off in la-la land."

"Literally," mutters Pete, and Gabe chokes back a laugh.

"Right, but." Gabe takes a deep breath, works to keep his voice even. "I need you to be here with me sometimes. Not all the time. I get that sometimes you have to be somewhere else. I want to be here for you with that, you know I do, so don't jump straight to me hating you and resenting you and wanting to be gone. Don't even play that shit, okay?" Pete doesn't answer, just stares straight ahead at his garage door. "I'm just saying, like, you've got needs, you need to be little, you need me to be there, I get that, and I fucking love it, so --"

"Love it?" Pete asks, and his voice is fucking tiny, but he's still a grownup. And, well, fuck, Gabe knew that, knew there's pretty much nothing Pete takes more seriously these days than negotiating a contract. He just hadn't stopped to think maybe Pete would take _their_ contract this seriously.

Although the last contract Pete negotiated was just a few weeks ago for The Cab, so what the fuck ever, Pete sure as hell better take Gabe more seriously than that band of Alexes.

"Yeah, I fucking love it. I love everything about you being little, Pete, and I don't want to change that. I just need some other stuff too. And --" Gabe holds up a hand when Pete opens his mouth, because it's not just that Pete knows Gabe, it's that Gabe knows Pete. "Do not fucking say shit about how you think I'm not happy with you or maybe I'd do better with someone else. That shit comes out of your mouth and I'm gonna beat the shit out of you, Wentz, do you understand me? No safewords, no games, just my hand and your ass until you see the error of your ways."

When he darts a glance over at Pete, Pete's just staring at him. Even in the darkness, his eyes are bright.

"And," Gabe says, grinning, "don't say that shit just to get my hand on your ass, dude. You want that, ask for it properly."

"I want that," Pete says immediately.

"Wait, seriously?" Gabe turns as much as the steering wheel will let him, and stares at Pete. "I --"

"I want that," Pete repeats. "I want that, I want -- okay, I know I'm bad at this, but come on, did you think you'd tell me that you need something from me and I wouldn't give it to you? Like . . . do you think I'll ever not give you what you want?"

"You still eat meat," Gabe says automatically.

"Fuck you." Pete flicks his thigh. "I need time. To. Like. I don't know, process this, I guess. Because what you're telling me is that I made our relationship all about me and what I needed from you, and I guess I didn't even realize that, which is way more self-absorbed than even I usually am, and --"

"Wait," objects Gabe. "It wasn't just you. I let you do it. And . . . I don't know." He takes a deep breath. "Alicia said today that -- you know, she said this shit and I realized that I try to give you everything I think you want, and when I do that, I'm not actually taking care of you. And, you know, I fucking . . . " Gabe falters here. He doesn't usually say this shit out loud, just thinks it and writes songs about it that he never shows anyone. And he'd, like, made the actual on-purpose decision not to say this shit to Pete, but now he thinks -- knows -- understands -- that he'd been so fucking wrong to do that, to not give Pete the benefit of the doubt, to not take the risk. "I fucking love you, and I know you know it, but I also want to take care of you, and I hate that I've been doing it wrong."

"Alicia," says Pete, and laughs. "Well, fuck, I bet she set you straight."

"She didn't, actually, she made me do all the hard work myself." Gabe makes a face that he knows will make Pete laugh. "She asked me if I ever safeworded out of you being little."

That makes Pete quiet right down. "You ever want to?" he asks, and, yeah, Gabe is pretty sure that having this conversation in the dark, in the car, was the right move.

"Sometimes," he confesses, and Pete hisses in a loud breath. Gabe flexes a fist, lets his knuckles crack. "More than once, anyway, when I just -- I love you when you're little, dude, and I get to be your daddy and take care of you and we have so much fucking fun. But sometimes I just need my -- my boyfriend."

It's quiet enough, with the radio off and the noise of LA a thousand feet below them, that Gabe can hear Pete swallow.

"You ever tell anyone that I'm your boyfriend?" Pete asks, and that is _not_ what Gabe had expected to come out of his mouth.

"Using those exact words?" he prevaricates.

"Fuck you," says Pete mildly.

"If you're asking who knows besides Mikey and Alicia, you're a fucking idiot. Everybody knows. You think this shit is a secret? The fucking _internet_ knows. We're a Tumblr name-smush, and let me tell you, I vote Santz and Gate are both fucking better than Treckett." Gabe taps fingers on the steering wheel. 

"Yeah, but have you _told_ anyone?" Pete persists.

Gabe sighs. "I don't get what you're looking for here," he says. "I told my dad and Ricky. I told Travie. When I started dating Erin, I told her she'd always come second to you, and she told me that her last boyfriend had had a boyfriend, too, that she preferred not being a primary partner anyway." Gabe shuts his eyes against the darkness and thinks. Who else had he told? "I told my crew, I told Bill -- hell, when I saw Carden last week, I fucking told him. What is your actual question?"

"I don't have one. I just wanted to know if you . . . " When Gabe opens his eyes, Pete is shrugging. "I don't know. If you took this seriously, I guess, or if it's just another game we're playing, like douchebag dudebros or the red carpet thing."

"Fuck you, that red carpet shit wasn't a game." Gabe's actually hurt by that, he thinks, but he can't tell, because he's starting to feel kind of numb. "Have you thought I was fucking with you this whole time?"

"No. I don't know. Not really? Not on purpose. Maybe it's a great diversion from what's happening with Cobra, or you're bored, or -- I don't know, Gabe, I just didn't know, because --"

"Because every time I try to have a grownup fucking conversation about what we need when we're adults, you run the fuck away!" Gabe's yelling by the end of that. So much for keeping his cool. Well, shit. 

"Fuck you! Every fucking time I thought it was gonna be when you fucking _left me!_ " Pete yells. "Everyone fucking leaves me, when are you gonna?"

"I'm _not_!" yells Gabe at the top of his lungs, and his voice breaks. "Shit," he whispers, "fuck."

"God," Pete says, "let's just go in and get you some tea."

"Fuck you," Gabe replies hoarsely, and he's pushing it, he knows he's pushing it, knows he shouldn't keep talking, but fuck it, he doesn't have to sing for the next few weeks. He never has to sing again. "What the fuck do I have to do to prove I'm not going to leave?"

"Stick around?" suggests Pete caustically. He gets out of the car and slams the door, and the floodlights go on. Gabe doesn't get his eyes shut in time, so he's going to be seeing fucking halos for, like, an hour. Fuck.

 _You're an asshole,_ he texts to Pete, and then he goes inside. Pete's already got the electric kettle plugged in and a teabag in a mug, bottle of honey next to it. Gabe fucking hates honey. Fucking bee shit. Pete slides him a whiteboard and a marker, turns his back to get out the tub of hot chocolate powder.

FUCK THIS, Gabe scrawls on the whiteboard, and pushes it back across the tiny kitchen table, but he drinks the tea and takes the pills Pete hands him, and once they're upstairs in bed, Gabe presses a kiss to Pete's hair.

*

Gabe's voice and throat are fucked up for days, and he ends up at the doctor, getting a lecture about shouting and being on stage and drinking too much coffee and smoking. He scrawls on the whiteboard, DON'T WORRY MY MUSIC DAYS ARE DONE, and Pete gasps when he gets a glimpse. Like he hadn't known? Like there was any way _Night Shades_ wouldn't be the last Cobra album?

The whole time Gabe has to stay silent (and he does it, because he's learned his fucking lesson, as much as he resents that shit), Pete is big -- and he takes care of Gabe. He takes care of Gabe and makes him listen to baby band demos and posts ridiculous pictures of Gabe's hair to Twitter and does all the things Gabe associates with Pete stressing out and trying to take care of shit. And he stays big, even though up to that point, he'd been ramping up how often he was little; the week before, it had been almost every day.

It makes Gabe think: sure, Pete likes it. He wants it. But he doesn't _need it_ , not the way Gabe had been thinking that Pete needed it.

And Gabe had kind of liked that, liked being the one to give Pete what he hadn't been getting enough of. But . . . Gabe can still do that, he figures, just not _all the time._

He keeps pushing on that little bruised place in his mind. What does he want? What isn't he getting? It feels like betrayal, even though logically Gabe knows it's not. 

WHAT IF I WANTED SOMETHING, he writes on the board. Then he erases it and rewrites it in purple marker, and leaves it on the table. 

He goes into the bathroom and runs a bath, uses one of Pete's glittery bath bombs that smells like lavender. It doesn't bubble (and the glitter is frankly disappointingly subtle), so he adds bubble bath. Pete has bubble bath from Lush for adults in bars, bubble bath in a dinosaur-shaped container for Bronx, and three different brands of "princess" bubble bath for when he's little. He sinks under the bubbles (dinosaur, of course), and breathes in the steam from the water and pushes a little harder on his brain.

 _¿Qué quieres, idiota?_ he asks himself. 

He stays in the bath until the water's cold and the sun has set and the bathroom's dark. Wrapped in three towels, he goes to the bedroom. The whiteboard is on the bed. It says (in green, in Pete's terrible scrawl):

let me i will give you everything/anything

*

They have sex, super great, intense sex, and even though they're sweaty afterward, Pete curls up close and Gabe holds on tight, and they pull the blankets up over their heads. When Gabe wakes up the next morning, Pete's already awake; Gabe has his hand over Pete's throat, and Pete's got his hand over Gabe's, and he's watching Gabe's face carefully. Gabe leans over to kiss him, putting extra pressure on Pete's throat, and Pete groans into Gabe's mouth.

"How you doing?" Gabe asks.

"Please," chokes out Pete, and Gabe reaches down to fist Pete's dick, jerks him dry and excruciatingly slowly, lets Pete struggle against Gabe's hand on his throat -- or, rather, struggle to make it tighter, struggle to choke himself. 

"Beg," orders Gabe, squeezing Pete's dick.

"Please," groans Pete, panting. "Please, Gabe, please, fuck, please, please, please --"

"You can come," Gabe says softly, and Pete comes with a cry, all over Gabe's hand, his stomach flexing, thighs shaking. He's fucking gorgeous, dark skin and long muscles and trembling.

When Pete gets his breath back, he rolls toward Gabe and says, "I want," and reaches for Gabe's dick. "Please."

"Please," Gabe echoes, and he wants to let his head fall back but he can't take his eyes off Pete.

*

  



End file.
